How do I address people who give feedback?

Question

Do I call them 'Respondent' or are there better words to use?

Example of the feedback as follows:

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| Question                                  | Rate (1 to 10: Best) |
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| Technical Knowledge                       |                      |
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| Communication Skills                      |                      |
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When the feedback is completed, there will be an email sent to the owner.

Dear Mr. Jack,

There is a feedback from a _______ as follows:

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| Question                                  | Rate (1 to 10: Best) |
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| Technical Knowledge                       | 8                    |
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| Communication Skills                      | 9                    |
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Also, there will be a report sent to the owner to sum up each week feedback as follows:

Dear Mr. Jack,

The following is the feedback for week (1/Jan/2012 to 7/Jan/2012):

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| Total ____________                        | 150                  |
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| Technical Knowledge (Mean Score)          | 8.97                 |
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| Communication Skills (Mean Score)         | 9.21                 |
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The question would be what should I fill in the blank (_____) as shown in the above?

Should it be 'Respondent' or 'Correspondent' or 'Responder' or 'Commenter' or are there better words for it?

Answer 1

In your case, you are the "respondent". You are responding to the person's feedback. "Respondent" is the term for a person who must, or is supposed to, respond to something. For example, if you file a lawsuit, then the respondent is the person you are suing, because they are expected to respond to the lawsuit.

If by "how do I address" you mean you want to know the form of address, that is, an appropriate salutation when writing back to a person who gave feedback, here are several options to consider:

Dear Reader,

Dear Commenter,

Dear Customer, (if appropriate in the situation)

Dear Sir/Madam, (formal, inclusive language)

Answer 2

Just imagine that there is an exact word for what you are looking for. Let's imagine that the word is feedbacker. Now imagine the following sentence, as you provided it:

There is a feedback from a feedbacker as follows:

Don't you think it would be a little bit redundant? Maybe if you used the other function of the person, as Schroedingers Cat suggested, like student or suchlike, it would be much better.

It's like saying:

I've bought an apple from a seller (from whom if not?)
I've sold the item to a buyer (to whom if not?)

IMO you should avoid that redundancy or at least make it more useful by adding some more specific term such as student.

In the case of the last example:

====================================================================
| Total ____________                        | 150                  |
====================================================================
| Technical Knowledge (Mean Score)          | 8.97                 |
====================================================================
| Communication Skills (Mean Score)         | 9.21                 |
====================================================================

I would simply use the term feedbacks. There is no need to reference the people that made the feedbacks. The important thing is the feedback itself, not the person that made it, even to the extent that feedbacks are usually anonymous.

Answer 3

Reviewer

I know that the accepted answer helped you restructure your address in general, but keep in mind that, in many cases, "reviewer" is the common name for such a person. They were able to provide feedback because the reviewed the work.

Answer 4

You have three options:

1. Responder as a generic term
2. Context specific term not a synonym of responder
3. Context specific synonym of responder

Feederbacker is not an option.

Answer 5

How about "correspondent"?